Don't say 'Mission Accomplished'

View full sizeAP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Luis SincoMarine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, 20, of Kentucky, a member of Charlie Company of the U.S. Marines First Division, Eighth regiment, smokes a cigarette in Fallujah, Iraq, Nov. 9, 2004.

This being August 2010, America's combat mission in Iraq is ending. It's happening with little sense of exultation from any side, except perhaps Iran's. It's happening, rather, with a sense of exhaustion and fading hopefulness.

As President Barack Obama said Monday at a speech in Atlanta, the 50,000 U.S. troops who remain in Iraq after this month will be engaged purely in supporting and training Iraq's Army -- not in carrying out any combat operations. And the remaining American troops are on schedule to leave Iraq entirely by the end of next year. It's worth remembering, seven years into this Mesopotamian adventure, how much America has yearned to read sentences like the two just above.

So why does this moment of transition feel so anticlimactic? Is it because Iraq remains mired in a political stalemate? That sectarian and political executions remain common occurrences? That Iran's involvement in Iraqi affairs seems to be growing? That U.S. troops still face multiple deployments, although increasingly, they will be in Afghanistan? That the costs of executing two wars have grown so burdensome during America's prolonged recession?

Possibly it's because the American mind is conditioned to hope for a clear-cut victory, which occurs at a time and in a way that is well understood by everyone. It is a hopefulness that was anticipated by then-President George W. Bush's speech aboard the USS Lincoln in 2003, when he touted the end of combat operations before a banner that read "Mission Accomplished."

A long, dispiriting, deepening and lethal series of engagements followed, as Iraq convulsed and threatened to come apart. Only a sort of Hail Mary reversal of U.S. military strategy, generally referred to as the surge, restored some sense of security and raised hopes again that Iraq could create a self-sustaining government that fairly represents its people.

Those hopes are flickering now. The country's inconclusive election in March has produced a political stalemate that has created a breathing space in which Baathists and outside terrorists have flourished. As a result, the headlines out of Iraq today are dominated by accounts of deadly explosions, a persistent lack of services, delays in letting contracts, threats of growing political disruption by Sunnis, Kurds and Shia factions. A grand political bargain in Iraq seems less likely than ever.

It's difficult, in these circumstances, to feel as if America's heavy commitment to Iraq -- the lives of 4,413 U.S. troops, for one thing, and an estimated $737 billion in funding, for another -- was worthwhile.

Nevertheless, it's time for the United States to wrap up its Iraq mission. Some in Iraq fear that the departure of U.S. troops will make it even less likely that Iraq's leaders can solve the country's problems. They would like America to stay engaged militarily, not to mention diplomatically and economically.

But America's time for military engagement in Iraq is, at last, drawing to an end. For better or worse, it must rely primarily on its diplomatic tools to assist Iraq through its painful transition to become some sort of functioning nation.

America's commitment to Iraq has been profound and painful. It has been marked by a sad procession of hushed memorial services, where unfamiliar names such as Anbar and Taji have been heard in churches and at gravesides in cities and small towns around the country.

For Iraq, it has been even more harrowing, as a great swath of the prewar society has been killed or fled to escape the killing. Iraqi society has been poured through a blender and reconfigured in a way that satisfies few. The situation remains volatile, and the outcome is uncertain.

If the U.S.-Iraqi partnership is to stagger forward, it will be under the supervision of men and women wearing business suits, not body armor, bristling with weaponry. With this month's transition, we are somewhat closer to that day.